The former director general of al-Jazeera television network Wadah Khanfar
spoke at the Telegraph Hay Festival about the challenges Egypt now faces.

Egypt faces a battle for its revolution as the presidential elections reach their climax this week, according to a leading commentator who backed the uprisings.

Voters face a choice between the Muslim Brotherhood candidate, Mohamed Morsi, and a former prime minister, Ahmed Shafik.

If they chose the former regime candidate, the country faces abandoning the revolution which was pivotal to the Arab Spring, according to Wadah Khanfar, the former director general of al-Jazeera television network.

Mr Khanfar denied that al-Jazeera had driven the Islamist dominance of the post-revolution elections by adopting an overtly religious agenda in the years before the uprising.

He told a packed audience at the Telegraph Hay Festival the second round of presidential elections, was going to be between “those who push for change and the state trying to defend itself.”

“Next week we are going to see who wins the confrontation,” he added.

The Egyptian state became a “tool for dictators” and if the Brotherhood candidate loses it will be a “great setback” for the revolution, said Mr Khanfar who now runs the Sharq Forum think tank.

He said the challenge for the young people who drove the revolution would then be to become an official opposition without destabilising the country.

But he sought to reassure his audience that the brotherhood, an Islamist organisation that has been the long time foe of the established regimes in the Middle East, was not a danger to the West.

The Muslim Brotherhood is now a political party of “Muslim democrats” Mr Khanfar said and if their candidate wins it would “send a message that 40 years of dictatorship has ended permanently.”

“It has become more political than Islamist and has demonstrated that it can be pragmatic and make alliances with people who may not agree with them…But they still have to learn how to deal with democracy and security,” he added.

The next stage of the changes in the Middle East, will put Iraq centre stage rather than Syria, as they begin to exploit untapped oil wealth, he added.

“Iraq not Syria is the most important element of the Middle East,” he said, explaining that the country’s dominance by politicians sympathetic to the ruling regimes in Iran and Syria pitted them against the other Arab countries.

But he also warned there were many challenges ahead on the road to democracy in the Middle East, including whether free elections can be held in Yemen and Jordan and whether the West will have the courage to arm Syrians involved in the uprising.

Coupled with the economic crisis in Europe it meant the “whole world” was changing in a direction which “cannot be predicted,” he added.